My interest in the mother-daughter relationship stems from my academic research, my feminism and my personal experience as a mother of four daughters. The mother-daughter relationship has been a pivotal area of my research in feminist literary theory
Grazia Deledda
I wrote my MA thesis on 'Mothers and Daughters in the Works of Grazia Deledda'
Feminist theorists have focused particularly on the mother-daughter relationship, an essential factor to a woman's sense of identity. From this premise I approached the works of Grazia Deledda, an Italian writer who received international acclaim, yet suffered the misunderstandings, condescension and predjudice synonomous with being female.
I have examined this area on three different levels: the writer's relationship with her own mother; her relationship to a motherless literary tradition bereft of female role models, a situation which coloured critical reception of her work; and the absence of the mother daughter relationship in her novels.
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